Sunday, September 11, 2016

Every year on this blog I repost this September 11th tribute as part of Project 2,996, an initiative that seeks to honor the memory of every one of the victims of the terrorist attack.

It is so important to keep the memory of those who died on 9/11 alive and to honor them. Individual lives can get lost in the intolerable and overwhelming number killed on 9/11, so we owe it to each of them to remember them as more than just one in 3,000:

Mildred Rose Naiman was 81 and from Andover, MA, the town next to my hometown. According to WBZ Boston, over 200 people with ties to Massachusetts died on 9-11-01.

"Millie," as she was known to her loved ones, was on her way to California to visit her 2 sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she was killed. She was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center.

Born on March 24, 1920, Mildred Naiman worked at Western Electric Co. as a tester. In her later years, she lived in a self-proclaimed "bachelorette pad" - her apartment in a retirement community - where she was active in planning and organizing events with her friends.

In a profile published on January 6, 2002, her daughter-in-law, Carol Naiman, told the New York Times, "She had a little bit of a lead foot. She had been stopped for speeding and was totally insulted the officer would give an old woman a ticket."

Although the feisty great-grandmother had had several knee replacement surgeries, cataracts, and other health problems, she still loved to travel. Her son Russ said, "If something was wrong with her, she'd go to the doctor and say, 'Fix me up; I've got a lot of traveling to do.' "

While she needed the help of a wheelchair at the airport, she still managed to visit her family twice a year. The Sunday before her fatal flight, a family member had asked if she was afraid of flying; her granddaughter, Hope, remembers her reply: "No, I've gone everywhere already--to Germany, the Bahamas. I'm not afraid to fly."

Incredibly, on July 24, 2004, the New York Post reported that the medical examiner's office had identified her remains. Many 9-11 victims are still unaccounted for. I hope her family gained some sense of closure with this discovery and was able to finally put her body to rest.

Today, on the anniversary of her death, we celebrate the life of Mildred Rose Naiman.

May she, and the others tragically murdered on that day, rest in peace.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Interesting look at how law enforcement uses social media to solve crime. For normal people, the rule is, don't post anything you don't want your mother to see. For politicos it's, don't post anything you don't want to see on the front page of the NY Times. For criminals it's, don't post anything you don't want the cops to use as evidence. Then again, I kind of want criminals stupid enough to post about their crimes on social media to get caught... So, criminals, please disregard that last rule and carry on! :D

Friday, September 11, 2015

Every year on this blog I repost this September 11th tribute as part of Project 2,996, an initiative that seeks to honor the memory of every one of the victims of the terrorist attack.

It is so important to keep the memory of those who died on 9/11 alive and to honor them. Individual lives can get lost in the intolerable and overwhelming number killed on 9/11, so we owe it to each of them to remember them as more than just one in 3,000:

Mildred Rose Naiman was 81 and from Andover, MA, the town next to my hometown. According to WBZ Boston, over 200 people with ties to Massachusetts died on 9-11-01.

"Millie," as she was known to her loved ones, was on her way to California to visit her 2 sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she was killed. She was aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked and crashed into the World Trade Center.

Born on March 24, 1920, Mildred Naiman worked at Western Electric Co. as a tester. In her later years, she lived in a self-proclaimed "bachelorette pad" - her apartment in a retirement community - where she was active in planning and organizing events with her friends.

In a profile published on January 6, 2002, her daughter-in-law, Carol Naiman, told the New York Times, "She had a little bit of a lead foot. She had been stopped for speeding and was totally insulted the officer would give an old woman a ticket."

Although the feisty great-grandmother had had several knee replacement surgeries, cataracts, and other health problems, she still loved to travel. Her son Russ said, "If something was wrong with her, she'd go to the doctor and say, 'Fix me up; I've got a lot of traveling to do.' "

While she needed the help of a wheelchair at the airport, she still managed to visit her family twice a year. The Sunday before her fatal flight, a family member had asked if she was afraid of flying; her granddaughter, Hope, remembers her reply: "No, I've gone everywhere already--to Germany, the Bahamas. I'm not afraid to fly."

Incredibly, on July 24, 2004, the New York Post reported that the medical examiner's office had identified her remains. Many 9-11 victims are still unaccounted for. I hope her family gained some sense of closure with this discovery and was able to finally put her body to rest.

Today, on the anniversary of her death, we celebrate the life of Mildred Rose Naiman.

May she, and the others tragically murdered on that day, rest in peace.

Saturday, November 15, 2014

It's been almost three years since President Obama callously cut and ran from Iraq so he could proudly proclaim, “I ended the war in Iraq, as I promised," as he ran for reelection. Former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta confirmed he "viewed the White House as so eager to rid itself of Iraq that it was willing to withdraw rather than lock in arrangements that would preserve our influence and interests."

Panetta concluded that "to this day, I believe that a small U.S. troop presence in Iraq could have effectively advised the Iraqi military on how to deal with al-Qaeda’s resurgence and the sectarian violence that has engulfed the country." As predicted, because of Obama's actions, the country has fallen to Islamic terrorists, horrific violence, and more war.

So much has been lost to ISIS under Obama that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told Congress on Thursday, "We're going to need about 80,000 competent Iraqi security forces to recapture territory lost, and eventually the city of Mosul, to restore the border."

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, indicated to the House of Representatives armed services committee that the strength of Isis relative to the Iraqi army may be such that he would recommend abandoning Obama’s oft-repeated pledge against returning US ground troops to combat in Iraq.

Retaking the critical city of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest, and re-establishing the border between Iraq and Syria that Isis has erased “will be fairly complex terrain” for the Iraqi security forces that the US is once again supporting, Dempsey acknowledged.

“I’m not predicting at this point that I would recommend that those forces in Mosul and along the border would need to be accompanied by US forces, but we’re certainly considering it,” he said.

... But should the Iraqi military prove unwilling to take back “al-Anbar province and Ninewa province” – the majority of territory in Iraq seized by Isis – or should the new Iraqi prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, exclude Sunnis from power, “I will have to adjust my recommendations,” Dempsey said.

Once again, if Obama had negotiated a responsible draw down that left provisional forces to protect our interests and progress, none of this would have happened.

If that was the message the voters sent, then it certainly wasn’t directed at Obama. A post-election poll from Gallup confirms that it is the GOP that the American people want to “get stuff done” – by a margin of 53% to 36%:
This is on the heels of a poll last month
which found that 32% of registered voters planned to send a message of
opposition to Obama’s agenda with their vote – the highest ever recorded
by Gallup – with only 20% planning to send a message of support.

How many more ways can the American people tell Obama STOP! CEASE!
DESIST! Obama only hears what he wants to hear, and it’s the sound of
his own voice.

Of course, you remember the infamous moment in the second presidential debate when moderator Candy Crowley interjected to wrongly say
that Obama had called the Benghazi attack an act of terror on September
12, 2012. It turns out CBS sat on a clip of the president refusing to
call the attack terrorism in an interview with Steve Kroft of “60
Minutes” from September 12th.

Here is the exchange that CBS hid – even from Attkisson who was heavily involved in reporting the story – until the waning days of the election (emphasis mine):

KROFT: Mr. President, this morning you went out of your way to avoid the use of the word “terrorism” in connection with the Libya attack. Do you believe that this was a terrorist attack?

OBAMA: Well, it’s too early to know exactly how this came about, what group was involved, but obviously it was an attack on Americans.
And we are going to be working with the Libyan government to make sure
that we bring these folks to justice, one way or the other.

SHARYL ATTKISSON, CBS INVESTIGATIVE
CORRESPONDENT: Fourteen hours after the attack, President Obama sat down
with Steve Kroft of “60 Minutes” for a previously scheduled interview
and said he did not believe it was simply due to mob violence.

OBAMA: You’re right that this is not a
situation that was exactly the same as what happened in Egypt. And my
suspicion is that there are folks involved in this who were looking to
target Americans from the start.

Attkisson was outraged when she found out that CBS hid the footage from her and the American people at such a relevant time:

Attkisson said, “Let me say that that exchange should
have been pulled out immediately after the debate, which would have been
very newsy at the time. It was exclusive to CBS. It would have to me
proven Romney’s point against Obama. But that clip was kept secret.”

“I was covering Benghazi, nobody told me we had it and directed me
from the ‘Evening News’ to a different clip of the same interview to
give the impression that the president had done the opposite. And it was
only right before the election that somebody kind of leaked out the
transcript to others of us as CBS and we were really shocked. We saw
that was something very unethical done to have kept that up.”

She added, “The ‘Evening News’ people who had access to that
transcript, according to the emails that I saw when it was sent from ’60
Minutes’ to ‘Evening News’ the very day it was taken, they, in my view,
skipped over it, passed it up, kept it secret. And I think that was
because they were trying to defend the president and they thought that
would be harmful to him.”

Thursday, October 23, 2014

Warning: As you might have guessed by the blog title, graphic discussion to follow.

I'd noticed that the fall's hottest new show "How to Get Away with Murder" has had an usual focus on its gay character Connor Walsh and his sex life, but last week's episode "Let's Get to Scooping" that aired on October 16, 2014 was so out-of-control, over-the-top, and in-your-face that I knew there was something else at play.

The episode featured a graphic, kinda rough and dominant gay sex scene followed by a character saying THREE TIMES, “He did this thing to my ass that made my eyes water" - it was repeated because it was part of a recorded conversation, but inclusion of that line when the tape was replayed was so COMPLETELY unnecessary that I could only conclude its purpose was to provoke. A quick Google search instantly confirmed my suspicions:

"I knew I wanted to push the envelope, especially with the gay sex," Nowalk explained to me. "And to me, writing the gay characterization and writing some real gay sex into a network show is to right the wrong of all of the straight sex that you see on TV. Because I didn't see that growing up, and I feel like the more people get used to two men kissing, the less weird it will be for people. I just feel like it's a lack of vision that you don't see it on TV, but ABC has never had a note about any of the weird stuff in the show, so I'm gonna keep it going."

Wow. He wants to "right the wrong" of straight sex on TV. Dude, seriously? I am so sick and tired of TV shows pushing their radical liberal agenda on viewers. But Nowalk goes so far above and beyond the typical encouragement of tolerance of gay relationships and marriage, he is pushing us to accept and celebrate gay sex! (BTW, you know what I didn't see growing up? Any TV roles depicting smart, strong, conservative women shown in a positive light - not liberal fantasies of what a conservative woman should believe, ala Calista Flockhart in Brothers and Sisters. When can we right that wrong?)

Furthermore, there is rarely a reason for any kind of sex to be on network TV shows except to be titillating and "progressive." I guess TV producers feel like they've pushed as far as they can go with straight sex for sensationalism that now they have to exploit gay sex. I told Shonda Rhimes as much and surprisingly she responded to me:

The editor of a gay entertainment website seemed to agree that some of the gay sex scenes "felt a little craven:"

Maybe my unease with the show is that, so far, it depicts gay intimacy as something shocking rather than natural and universally relate-able.

How to Get Away with Murder and other Shonda Rhimes shows are definitely unsettling conservative viewers with gay content. Which may be a great thing– but less of a great thing when it inadvertently reinforces the stereotype that gay men are hyper-sexual creatures. ...

The remedy for the lack of gay representation in television maybe isn’t to load it up all in one series. Can’t we spread it out a bit? Having so much Connor action in HTGAWM and so little everywhere else on the TV dial feels a little like gay gerrymandering.

(This writer also had me laughing when he said, 'But I find myself cringing when his onscreen conquests say things like “he did this thing to my ass that made my eyes water.” What, did he stick an onion up there or something?')

So, to all who say, "Don't like it, don't watch it," fine, I won't, although, maybe I'll follow along by reading spoilers online. Sucks that the show has forced me into that choice by having a mission that seems to be to make viewers uncomfortable, "unsettled," and "desensitized" in some bizarre reverse micro-aggression fantasy.* But it's their loss to alienate a viewer in the coveted women with disposable income aged 18-34 demographic.

BTW, I watched the episode on the Watch ABC app where I was bombarded with J.C. Penny commercials at each break. So, good job on advertisement placement, J.C. Penny, I now associate you with eye-watering anal.

*This isn't my only reason to stop watching. I also hate every character on the show and find myself rolling my eyes every other minute at some smug and pretentious piece of dialogue, implausible and ridiculous "legal" breakthrough, or frustrating and incomprehensible character action. Also, this kid's dumb facial expressions:

Thursday, September 11, 2014

It is so important to keep the memory of those who died on 9/11
alive and to honor them. Individual lives can get lost in the
intolerable and overwhelming number killed on 9/11, so we owe it to each
of them to remember them as more than just one in 3,000.

Every year on this blog I
repost this September 11th tribute as part of Project 2,996,
an initiative that seeks to honor the memory of every one of the victims of
the terrorist attack:

Mildred Rose Naiman was 81 and from Andover, MA, the town next to
my hometown. According to WBZ Boston, over 200 people with ties to
Massachusetts died on 9-11-01.

"Millie," as she was known
to her loved ones, was on her way to California to visit her 2 sons,
grandchildren and great-grandchildren when she was killed. She was
aboard American Airlines Flight 11, the first plane to be hijacked and
crashed into the World Trade Center.

Born on March 24, 1920,
Mildred Naiman worked at Western Electric Co. as a tester. In her later
years, she lived in a self-proclaimed "bachelorette pad" - her apartment
in a retirement community - where she was active in planning and
organizing events with her friends.

In a profile published on January 6, 2002, her daughter-in-law, Carol Naiman, told the New York Times,
"She had a little bit of a lead foot. She had been stopped for speeding
and was totally insulted the officer would give an old woman a ticket."

Although
the feisty great-grandmother had had several knee replacement
surgeries, cataracts, and other health problems, she still loved to
travel. Her son Russ said, "If something was wrong with her, she'd go to
the doctor and say, 'Fix me up; I've got a lot of traveling to do.' "

While
she needed the help of a wheelchair at the airport, she still managed
to visit her family twice a year. The Sunday before her fatal flight, a
family member had asked if she was afraid of flying; her granddaughter,
Hope, remembers her reply: "No, I've gone everywhere already--to Germany, the Bahamas. I'm not afraid to fly."

Incredibly,
on July 24, 2004, the New York Post reported that the medical
examiner's office had identified her remains. Many 9-11 victims are
still unaccounted for. I hope her family gained some sense of closure
with this discovery and was able to finally put her body to rest.

Today, on the anniversary of her death, we celebrate the life of Mildred Rose Naiman.

May she, and the others tragically murdered on that day, rest in peace.

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Email me if you want to be added to the blog list: Alexa at alexashrugged.com
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Disclaimer: Opinions are my own, not that of my employer.
Things to know about me and this blog:
No, I'm not obsessed with Ayn Rand, I just thought this title was cool, although I do agree with many of her ideas on liberty.
I will post whatever I feel like here, but it will mostly be links to articles I find funny, interesting, or noteworthy, that you will probably not hear about from the mainstream media (MSM).
I am socially conservative, neo-con on foreign policy, and fairly libertarian economically.